Township promoted as leak-free

By ANNE GIBSON

Fletcher Residential, New Zealand's largest house builder, has launched a $300 million South Auckland township that it promises will be watertight.

As the rotting homes crisis forces builders such as Auckland's Akita Construction to insolvency, Fletcher has taken the high ground to promote a new village without leaks.

Fletcher Residential general manager David Halsey said yesterday that his company had identified weathertightness problems in multi-unit housing developments some years ago and had refused to build them.

Now it wants to create Wattle Cove, a 900-house subdivision, in Manukau City on the Wattle Downs peninsula, near Manurewa and the Southern Motorway's Takanini offramp. Ninety conventionally styled houses have just been completed in the 10-year project.

A 10-home display area opens on the site near the shores of Manukau Harbour next weekend to promote Fletcher Residential subsidiaries Kingsley Homes, Dempsey Morton, Winstone Home Builders and Fletcher Homes.

Mr Halsey hopes to sell Wattle Cove homes for $280,000 to $380,000.

Fletcher will start a marketing campaign next weekend to promote the new town. A state primary school is planned for the village, which has its own lake and is centred around a golf course and the Acacia Cove Retirement Village.

"Our houses will be a standalone conventional design, clad in brick, have eaves and be built by a skilled labour force," Mr Halsey said.

Multi-unit, monolithic-clad, Mediterranean-style houses were most prone to leaks, he said. "That's not the sort of housing we build. We're going to keep our heads down over the leaky buildings issue because watertightness is related to terraced housing and cheaper housing and we're not involved in that."

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Further reading
Feature: Leaky buildings

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